As I celebrate my 49th year on this magical, challenging, beautiful, crazy ride called life, I am in deep reflection mode around what I’ve learned and what lessons I want to take into my next half century.
First let me say…I’m always in deep reflection mode but this dawning of a new year brought with it a series of chaotic scenarios that left me in urgent care and wondering WTH!
My family and I fell awake into crisis and with me having an anxiety attack, I think (at the time of this writing I’m still in testing with no diagnosis yet). Yep I say “fell awake” because it felt out of control and crazy and like we were falling away from our values and what we hold most important. But when we hit rock bottom my eyes snapped open and I remembered.
The details of the events are not important. What is important is that as a dear friend and colleague put it, I went through the fire and came out on the other side.
What is important is that I have a few lessons to share that you can take with you on your journey and when you are met with a fire storm and you most likely will be, here’s how you can move through it to the other side.
God is in Everything
One of the most important things that I started to live as my life philosophy is that God is in everything. When we go through tough times we can be blinded by the intensity of emotion. Sitting in sadness, anger and or depression can make it easy to question how can God be in this situation.
The Creator is always in its Creation.
Understanding that God is in this too because well, God is in me and that tells me that I am not alone. I am supported. This is so important because hard times are usually lonely times. God is truly in everything and having this understanding allows for a divine discovery. Cry, scream, pound your fist, honor your whole emotional cycle but never stop believing that some good will come of this even if it doesn’t feel like it or look like it, smell like or taste like it right now. There will be a Divine Discovery! Believe.
Ask an Empowering Question
It’s easy to say “Why me?” or the one that I used in this scenario is “how did we get here?” and trust me I wasn’t saying it from a powerful place. It was more like HOW THE FREAK DID WE GET HERE? (said screaming with wretched sarcasm!) But when my head hit that rock bottom hard ass floor I heard my inner voice say, “Ask a more empowering question” and after a long pause I asked, “What is trying to emerge here?” Now if you take on this exercise please know, the answer may not come immediately.
I tried to convince myself that I did not have time for spirituality and empowerment right now. “Your family is in crisis DO SOMETHING!” I did not know what to do but I continued to ask the question daily. And something began to spark. I started to see possibilities and a solution did emerge.
An empowering question is the rope, the lifeline that is thrown to you that slowly lifts you out of your dark place and helps to pull you to the other side. It helps to change your perspective and positions you to be solution oriented.
This is hard when you’re going through it but if you can hold on to these two life lessons: God is in Everything and Ask an Empowering Question in the midst of the fire, it may not stop the storm but these are tools to help you fight your way to the other side. Here’s to the magical, challenging, beautiful, crazy ride we call life.
May it be well with you!
Jill Flowers is a Soul Coach & Spiritual Curator of the Black Women's Healing Circle. She is a Spiritual Life Coach and Speaker to find out more about retreats & private coaching please visit: JillFlowers.com